Books by Gary Graybill

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Liberty or Death!

During
a speech before the second Virginia Convention, Patrick Henry responds
to the increasingly oppressive British rule over the American colonies
by declaring:

"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Following
the signing of the American Declaration of Independence on July 4,
1776, Patrick Henry was appointed governor of Virginia by the
Continental Congress.

The first major American opposition to
British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a
taxation measure to raise revenues for a standing British army in
America. Under the banner of "no taxation without representation,"
colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize
their opposition to the tax. With its enactment on November 1, 1765,
most colonists called for a boycott of British goods and some organized
attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of
protest, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1765.

Most
colonists quietly accepted British rule until Parliament's enactment of
the Tea Act in 1773, which granted the East India Company a monopoly on
the American tea trade. Viewed as another example of taxation without
representation, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the "Boston
Tea Party," which saw British tea valued at some 10,000 pounds dumped
into Boston harbor. Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and
other blatant destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive
Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in the following year. The
Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal
British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to
criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter
British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental
Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

With
the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance
to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and
establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence
across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of
Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord,
Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April
19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American
militiamen at Lexington, and the first volleys of the American
Revolutionary War were fired.

Today's Reflection:

We must do our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies